Thanks for joining!

Mostly it's just myself (the site owner), as far as professional engineers go on this board.  I'm a studio engineer and producer, and I try to help out people just getting started with recording.

Feel free to join in though and offer your expertise whenever you can.

Thanks!

Steve

Dez,

Can you be more specific about "sound arts"?  Are you looking to learn to become a recording engineer?  Or be able to do live sound?  Or music production?  Or audio post work?  All of the above??

If you search some in the Ask MusicTECH part of this board, you'll find my opinion on a lot of the expensive recording schools (basically, a lot of them are a waste of money).  I think there are better ways to break into this business, and you should really be studying something like computer and electrical engineering in college, which would certainly help you with modern recording, but, more importantly, give you the education to actually land a job where you have a real chance of earning a living.

Steve

Have you read this article that I wrote on this site?
http://www.music-tech.com/recording.php?subaction=showfull&id=1112852305&archive...;

It's a bit old now, but it still applies.

This is REALLY a bad business to be trying to get into right now.  The chances of making ANY money at all are fairly small, let alone enough money to make a living (or even come close to getting rich).  Everybody wants music for free these days... the younger generation is growing up with easy to find free downloads of any music they want, so they are not even used to paying for music.  The big phone companies and other internet service providers are trying to get labels and artists to basically give away all their music for free as part of an enhanced cell phone or internet plan.

Big studios are closing down all over the world, leaving a surplus of highly trained and very experienced recording engineers without work... so, the chances of someone fresh out of some recording school landing a paying job are pretty much nothing.

Read that article, and get a real degree that you can use, such as something to do with computers, and get a real job with decent pay and build up your own small studio on the side at home.  Do music production and recording in your free time for fun and see how it goes.  It's MUCH more fun to produce and record music when you don't have the stress of having to pay rent or pay for all the equipment you bought by taking on crap recording jobs with bands and artists who you don't really want to work with.  If you get good enough at it and there is enough demand for your services, then you can consider quitting your job and doing it full time.

That's my best recommendation for you.  But, if you really want to get educated, and you have the amount of money that some of those specialized schools want to charge you to learn recording, that money would be MUCH better spent paying a real working engineer in a really nice studio in your area to let you come in once or twice a week during their down time and give you private, one-on-one instruction in a real working environment.  I'd still go to college and study computers, though, since now days almost all music is recorded and produced with computers anyhow... so, the more you know about computers, the better off you'll be (you can assemble and fix your own systems, as well as get a real job doing something similar).

Good luck with it!

Steve

Yes... it's sad, but the industry is going through a major change right now and people will have to adopt or get left behind.

Certainly there will always be a need for big recording studios and great recording engineers and producers.  However, that market is shrinking quite a bit, and so we are not only losing some great studios along the way, but also there is now more recording engineers and producers than there is work to go around.  Plus, more and more students are coming out of recording programs every day thinking they are going to land a job in a recording studio, and those jobs simply don't exist anymore.  The few remaining jobs are going to go to those established true superstar producers and engineers, and those rare few new young hustlers who find a unique way to make a name for themselves and find some work.

Many engineers are shifting to other areas of work where there is still some money to be made.  There will always be the need for large recording studios and competent engineers for things like symphony orchestras for soundtrack work, etc.  Live sound will always be around, and may even start to grow as more and more musicians are finding that live shows are the best way to make money these days as record sales decline and illegal downloads increase.

Two of the engineers I used to work with at the big studio are now working for large multimedia companies doing sound design and recording and music, etc.  Three other engineers went to work for Paul Allen for a while.  One of them is still with one of Paul Allen's companies, while the other one (whose was our head engineer at the studio) got out of the music business entirely and went into computer networking to earn enough to support his family.  One other engineer who I worked with, who had done many major label projects, is still doing it on an independent level in the area... producing and engineering a variety of local artists and any other work he can dig up.  I'm not sure how well he is doing, but at least he hasn't given up.

I think you'll find similar situations all around the world.  Many of the engineers will simply move into different areas of work, for corporate multimedia companies, or post production, or live work, while others will just give up and get a "real" job in some other field.

As for myself, within the first 6 months of working at that large recording studio (about 16 years ago now), I saw that it was a dead end job.  The experience was incredibly valuable, but I was lucky to earn $20K to $25K per year from the studio.  That was fine when I was young and single, but the other engineers with families were having a hard time.  I quickly saw some opportunities and starting building up my own business on the side, and after just 3 years at that studio, I went totally independent (although I still did a lot of work at that studio with my own clients, or when they would call me up needing someone to do a session that the others couldn't do).

These days I have two profitable product lines of my own that I produce, mostly out of my own home based studio, and I'm expanding into some other markets as well.  I still love working with great musicians and doing purely music projects, but I only do a select number of those each year, usually with long term friends/clients.  My own products bring a much better return on my time investment than what I can charge on an hourly basis for my services to clients, so I can afford to be very picky about what types of outside projects I take on.  Recently I've been extremely busy with three big projects from clients... a couple of long term clients/friends, and one new two album mixing project for a Canadian artist (all being done over the internet). 

So, there is certainly still work out there, but if I was still trying to make my living purely as an engineer/studio for hire, it would be very tough right now and I'd have to take on a lot of projects that I simply wouldn't enjoy (did that for too many years, and am very happy now to be in a position to say "no").

So, in short, in my opinion, there will always be a need for large recording studios and talented recording engineers.  However, the peak of the big recording studio days has long past, and now we are in a downsizing phase.  More and more young artists are recording themselves at home, so that market has been taken away from the big studios, and thus we don't need so many big studios anymore.   The big studios that remain will be the ones who find a way to be competitive and stay in demand while still somehow making enough money to pay the rent and all the other enormous expenses of operating a big studio.

Steve